Crosman CO2 Pistol Problems

2300T from the Crosman Website
My pistol looked similar.

I've already posted on my Beeman P1 which was a great gun and for the record I'm generally a Crosman fan. BUT! What I didn't tell in that post is that I bought another air pistol before the P1.

In those days when I made the trip to OKC I'd visit several gunshops if time permitted. I kept looking at the Beeman P1 which I eventually bought. The same gun store put a then new Crosman single shot CO2 pistol on display. It was advertised to be accurate and to have a muzzle velocity of 550 fps with light weight .177 pellets.

The gun looked similar to the Crosman 2300 bolt-action pistol made today. It was probably a model 1740, but  I'm not sure. I told myself the new CO2 gun should do almost anything a P1 could do for only $50.  The P1 was almost six times that price at $285 if I remember correctly.  I bought the CO2 gun!

The gun functioned well enough and the pellets did hit with considerably more authority than pellets  from my Crosman Mark 11.  The problem was the pellets went all over the place! At short range my Mark 11 was deadly accurate, more accurate than I could shoot it.

At short range my the Mark 11 would stack one pellet on top of the other when I did my part.  At the same short range this new gun would only shoot a two inch group, maybe.

For small game or pest  an air gun must have the accuracy needed for head shots.  I took a few small critters with this new gun, it had decent killing power, but I couldn't depend on it to shoot where it was pointed.

I know about guns and I tried everything short of those which could void the warranty:

• Going over the gun to find anything loose, improperly fitted... 
• Several different styles and brands of pellets. 
• I mounted a cheap little rifle scope on it to reduce my sighting errors.
• I shot it from several different kinds of rest.
• I tried holding the gun in different ways.
• It sounded and hit like the CO2 was metered consistently. 
• I couldn't see anything, but my hunch was that there was something wrong in the barrel.
• I wanted it to work for me, but it simply would not.

That gun is one of the few things, and the only gun I've ever returned to a store. I asked a shop employee what he could do to help me? He'd sold out of that model but offered a Crosman 357 (now called 3576, I believe) revolver of about equal value. The 357 appeared to be a good fun gun and it was. But it was not what I needed or wanted at that time.